Rust is a storm. Sometimes it’s admired passively from a distance for its beauty, sometimes it’s felt uneasily at the fringes of its arrival and sometimes it’s experienced dead center of its fury. The trio of drummer Laurent Paris, clarinetist Robin Fincker and guitarist Pascal Maupeu wield dissonance to create an array of different but related expressions to where the changes between different states are as dramatically vivid as they are a seamless flow. “Edelweiss” is the contrast of an unsteady tranquility juxtaposed against the hint of conflict. And then there are tracks like “Big Fish” and “Crab” where a hazy form and muddied melodicism is provided definition by rhythmic outbursts and a slowly emerging sense of cadence. Title-track “Rust” phases in and out of subtlety and the profane. And “Mini,” that’s merely a hint of a rumor of a mystery, and it’s told in a whisper. The album finale of “The Old Mariner” closes the loop, but the serenity feels battered and marked by the experience.

There’s something rather admirable about how this trio uses the raw material of dissonance, and rather than try to obscure it with distractions and sleights-of-hand to make it more palatable, they just put it out there in its best light, its truest imagery, and show it for what it is. There is a beauty in decay, and the gradual erosion of something pretty can leave, in its wake, visions no less compelling that those which preceded them. Rust is a reminder of that notion. It’s also seriously compelling music.